AUDIENCE WITH THE QUEEN: Subpoena Goes to EPA Chief Demanding Animas River Explanation

The EPA chief will be subpoenaed to appear before a U.S. Senate committee after the agency snubbed key Republicans by offering written testimony on the Animas River by some faceless bureaucrat in her stead.

Specifically, the apparent boycott ticked off Sens. John McCain of Arizona and John Barrasso of Wyoming, who chairs the Indian Affairs Committee.

They will command that EPA Chief Gina McCarthy grant them an audience on April 22 in Phoenix, to address the problems that her agency caused with the spill that spread across reservations.

In typical Washington fashion, the EPA responded by making an announcement of their own to divert attention from the agency’s manmade disaster — they have decided to list the Gold King mine where they caused said disaster, as a Superfund.

The EPA said the sites that made the list and those that are proposed are “sites with known or threatened hazardous waste releases that could pose risks to public health and the environment.”

The grand and bureaucratically formal announcement will be Thursday when it’s published in the Federal Register.

We’re absolutely certain that it won’t mention, that one of the sites with “known or threatened hazardous waste releases” was actually due to the dirty work of the agency now charged with cleaning up their mess.

Meanwhile, we’re predicting that McCarthy will try and dodge the subpoena by citing pending legal action from the reservations and states affected by the spill.